It is ALWAYS real..

With the recent and horrifying comments made by a certain senator and seconded by the GOP vice-president nominee, it is time for me to speak out. The subject is painful, the memories graphic, but the words are more important than the fear.

The summer before I started the ninth grade, I was held at knife point and raped. I was a virgin. I did not report the rape, the rapist said he knew where I lived and he would come get me when I was alone. I did not see his face, but I will never forget his voice. Calling me a slut and a whore, asking me if I liked it, telling me I deserved it. Slicing off chunks of my hair when I refused to say I liked it, smashing my face into a concrete wall when I wouldn't say I deserved it, raping me anally when I tried to scream and bit the hand he had over my mouth. I fought, and I lost. He laughed during the rape, finding my terror funny.

 I did not tell my mom, I claimed I was tired of my hair and chopped it off, said I fell on the rickety steps and scraped up my face. I spent a lot of time alone at that point, 16-18 hours a day there was no one but me at home.. so I didn't tell, not anyone.

Keeping the secret became as bad as the rape itself. Even after we moved to Colorado, I was afraid to tell. It was like the rapist would know, and he would come find me. Every time I didn't tell, he won again. I turned sex into my own weapon, my power. I slept around.. a LOT, with everyone except the guys I dated. I got into a car at a 7-11 with a perfect stranger, went to Denver with this guy, had sex with him and then left. I gave a different guy a blow-job in his car to get a ride back to the Springs. If it had a penis, I was gonna fuck it. I lost friends because I slept with their boyfriends, I had women looking for me because I had sex with their husbands. The only guys that were safe, were the ones that wanted to be my boyfriend. I got hooked on drugs. I allowed the rapist to destroy me every single day.

I finally told. My junior year of high school. A girl who had been my best friend was going to court because she had been molested, and my mom said how lucky I was that nothing like that had happened to me. I started screaming that it had happened to me. After all those years, all those guys, all the lies and hate came pouring out. I was mad at my mom too, because somehow she was supposed to have known. That was the moment I started to heal.

I am still afraid of a certain kind of man. A voice, or a smell will send me into a panic. I know it isn't rational, and I can usually play it off, but for just a second, I remember.

Now, for the part I have never told anyone, the hardest part of it all. After the rape, I didn't get my period at the usual time. I became convinced that I had the rapists baby inside me. I started having nightmares of a demon with no face ripping out of my body, my heart in his hand, and eating it while I died. Nightmares of the rapist finding out I was pregnant and stealing me, making me grow his baby and stabbing me to get it out. Horrific and detailed, every single night.. then even when I was awake. It was all I could think about. I contemplated suicide, afraid that the spawn inside me would know if I told anyone about it, and would force me to continue carrying it until it could kill me. I decided on a day. I decided on a method. I wrote my letters, said my goodbyes. I got my period.

I know, without a doubt, that if my period had not started that day.. I would be dead. The thought of having that evil demon inside me was more than I could begin to handle. The belief that a rapist could take my virginity, my pride, my safety, and leave something growing in my body, the body he abused and defiled, was  enough to push me into almost killing myself. I felt nothing but loathing for what I thought was inside me, disgust and hate and sheer unadulterated repugnance for this horrifying thing.

I was lucky, I wasn't pregnant. So many women and girls are not so fortunate. To hear the senator say that a woman's body can just shut down during a rape is beyond grotesque. To know that there are people out there that want to force a victim of rape to carry and give birth to the product of that rape is so terrifying it can not be fathomed. These women, these girls, will find themselves in the same place I was. Contemplating their own death in order to stop the birth of a hated thing.

 Is that really what you are willing to do?

To those of you that are pro-fetus, until you step up and carry that fetus to term instead of the woman who doesn't want it, shut up. It is not your story to write, not your right to edit the ending. No woman should ever be forced to give birth to something she does not want, not ever. The life of one is not worth the life of the other. Never. You haven't had an abortion, good for you, you can stand before god with a pure soul. You don't get to make anyone else do what you want. Deal with it please.